Shooting Down Private Jets

By

Robert Frank

Mar 9, 2009 12:22 pm ET

Like boondoggles in Miami, Wall Street bonuses and Hummers, the private jet has quickly become a hated symbol of excess.

It started with the car execs jetting to Capitol Hill to plead poverty. Then it moved to Sandy Weill, who was shamed into turning in his retirement ride to Citigroup. And it was capped by a comment from President Obama, who said during an address to Congress that CEOs shouldn’t be able to use taxpayer money to “disappear on a private jet” (excepting Air Force One, of course).

Photo Credit: NASA via Wikipedia

The message is clear: Private jets are evil, part of the indulgent, I’ve-got-mine greed and avarice that got the U.S. into this mess.

The private jet industry has “the Scarlet Letter placed on the back,” Myles Walton, an analyst in Boston with Oppenheimer & Co., wrote in a recent report, adding that demand may not pick up again until 2012.

In response to the attacks, the private-jet industry has launched a PR counter-offensive, emphasizing that jets are business tools, not mere playthings. They save executives time and money, the trade groups say, and they are good for the economy. “All that is needed is an understanding in Washington that it’s not fair for private aviation to become a political punching bag in some perverse populist version of class warfare in the skies,” James Coyne, president of the National Air Transportation Association, wrote Mr. Obama.

Of course, the jet debate has been fueled by propaganda on both sides. Company jets can save time and money for time-pressed executives, but when used to ferry a CEO to his Friday afternoon golf match in Naples, Fla., the utility is hard to justify.

The real downside of trashing private jets is job losses. The business-aviation industry employs more than a million workers. In the past week, some of those jobs started disappearing. Gulfstream Aerospace, the General Dynamics Corp. unit that makes Gulfstream jets, was swamped with backlog orders at this time last year. Now it is trimming production and cutting about 1,200 jobs. Bombardier, which makes Learjets and Challengers, is cutting 1,360 jobs, while Textron’s Cessna unit is cutting 4,000 jobs.

Of course, the main reason for the cuts is the recession, not name-calling in Congress. Still, politicians and pundits should bear in mind that when they attack private jets, the shrapnel can wing the working-class people who build them. One man’s excess is another man’s livelihood. Shooting down private jets may good good politics, but it isn’t good job creation. [END OF POST]